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This Is Where I Leave You (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on December 18th, 2014

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“Everybody’s sad or angry or lying or cheating.”

That seems to be the state of the four adult Altman children even before they are thrust back together following the death of the family patriarch. This Is Where I Leave You has all the makings of a great dysfunctional dramedy. It has a terrific cast and is based on the very popular book by Jonathan Tropper, who wrote the screenplay. Yet the movie comes up well short of delivering on its promise. Despite some strong acting, a handful of funny beats, and a passing similarity to another ensemble movie where characters who were formerly close are brought back together by a funeral, this movie is less Big Chill and more “Big Shrill.”
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The Skeleton Twins (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on December 16th, 2014

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“You know what the sad thing is? We’re a good team.”

Up until they teamed up to star in The Skeleton Twins, there was nothing sad about the team of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. Regardless of how you feel about the quality of Saturday Night Live in recent years, Wiig (the only cast member to earn an Oscar nomination — for co-writing Bridesmaids — while still appearing on the show) and Hader (with “Stefon” and a laundry list of impressions that ranged from Alan Alda to Al Pacino) were clear standouts. So you’d expect their first post-SNL big-screen team up to be a laugh riot. That’s not exactly the case.
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Into the Storm (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on November 21st, 2014

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Breaking news: anyone who goes to see movie called Into the Storm is probably more interested in “the Storm” than they are in any of the people running away from it. The good news is the film understands this, to an extent, and clocks in at a slender 89 minutes. Of course, the titular Storm doesn’t appear for every one of those 89 minutes. This is very bad news because Into the Storm is populated with characters and storylines that are both forgettable and irritating. It’s basically Twister with somewhat better effects, but much less interesting people.
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Housebound (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on November 19th, 2014

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Laughing out loud and getting startled out of your wits are two of the most visceral reactions you can have as a moviegoer. For a director to elicit either reaction is challenging enough, which is why I was so delighted to be feeling both during the thrilling, funny finale of Housebound. It’s an even more impressive feat when you consider it was accomplished by a first-time filmmaker working on a shoestring budget.
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The Dog (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on November 18th, 2014

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“If anybody gets up, they’re dead. Anybody moves, they’re dead. Anybody makes a sound before I leave this movie, …”

You get the idea. These are the words of one John Wojtowicz, better known as The Dog. On August 22, 1972 he attempted to rob a Chase Manhattan bank in order to finance his male lover’s sex change operation so that he could become a woman. The heist was about as amateur as the come and went horribly wrong from the start. In a matter of minutes the bank was surrounded by a swarm of police units and a growing mob of bystanders.
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Jersey Boys (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on November 11th, 2014

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“You sell 100 million records, and see how you handle it.”

If you’ve ever seen an episode of Behind the Music — or followed popular culture at all in the previous century — then you probably know artists tend to not handle that level of success very well. However, the rise and (inevitable) fall of the original Four Seasons lineup is unique for a number reasons. Unfortunately, very few of those reasons are captured in Jersey Boys, Clint Eastwood’s oddly lifeless, workmanlike adaptation of the joyous, wildly popular Broadway musical.
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Drive Hard (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 11th, 2014

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Personally I’m not a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, despite the fact that I tend to enjoy films from the genre. For me, I’ll take the old school films like Vanishing Point, Two-Lane Blacktop, and the original Gone in 60 Seconds over these big budget productions any day. All I can figure is that these films that I do enjoy are working with budgets that force the directors to be creative and understand most of their elaborate stunts only get one take and are not polished with CGI, but instead whatever the camera captures that is what we see on the big screen. The stunts are simply incredible, and the cars in my humblest opinion were simply cooler back then.
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Getting On: The Complete First Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on November 10th, 2014

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“It’s noble work. It is useful. You are angels of mercy…I just never thought that I would end up here.”

The geriatric care wing of a hospital — where the employees are undermanned and overworked, and many of the patients are in a near-catatonic state — is not the most obvious sitcom setting. As a result, HBO’s comedy series Getting On isn’t exactly what I’d call a gut buster. But even though much of the humor seems hyper-specific to this particular circle of workplace hell, anybody who has ever been underpaid to do a hard, crappy job should be able to relate.
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The Newsroom: The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on November 7th, 2014

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– “We don’t have the trust of the public anymore.”

– “Get it back!”

The Newsroom took a pretty decent beating during its first season. Sure, plenty of people praised the show’s exceptional acting and ambition, but too much of the conversation seemed to revolve around its flaws and its polarizing creator. In this Blu-ray set’s bonus material, Aaron Sorkin cops to being “overly earnest” and “aggressively uncool” in his work.
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Life of Crime (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on November 5th, 2014

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This has been a review that has taken me a while to get to, not because it’s something I was dreading, but instead it had me revisiting some other Elmore Leonard adaptations to the screen. There have been countless adaptions of Leonard’s work on the big screen as well as television. Whether it’s his westerns 3:10 to Yuma, Justified or Hombre or his work on crime Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, and Get Shorty, there is a good chance at some point you’ve seen Elmore’s work, and those were just a handful of titles I mentioned. I was a teenager when I first discovered Elmore Leonard
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Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 29th, 2014

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“It was the gang that ran amok. You have people who were being extorted, who talked of having a shotgun barrel stuck in their mouths or machine guns pointed at their groin. Body bags were shown by Bulger as he shakes them down. It was absolute terror.”

It amazes me that I really had very little idea who James J. Bulger was before I watched this film by director Joe Berlinger. How could I have missed this guy? On the run for over 16 years, Bulger was once #2 on the FBI’s most wanted list. Who was #1? That was Osama Bin Laden. So who was this man that came in second only to the world’s most infamous terrorist?
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The Prince (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on October 28th, 2014

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“That man brings hell with him wherever he goes.”

The “man” is supposed to be Paul Brennan (Jason Patric), a retired mob enforcer-turned-unassuming auto mechanic who reluctantly returns to his violent ways after his daughter goes missing. But the real culprit might be director Brian A. Miller. With The Prince and this year’s The Outsider, the director has made two consecutive sub-Taken crime dramas that lack the cohesion, refinement or energy to work even as satisfyingly junky action movies.
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“31 Nights of Terror” Sharknado 2: The Second One (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by J C on October 9th, 2014

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“You know what you just did, don’t you? You jumped the shark.”

People have been mocking SyFy original films since the days when the network spelled its own name properly. But staying home on a Saturday night to “MST3K” your way through flicks with D-list actors and Z-grade visual effects has been replaced by Twitter, which practically blew up when the impossibly campy Sharknado premiered last year. SyFy recognized that social media has made it possible for anyone with Internet access to trade yuks and one-liners on a global scale; more importantly, it has allowed the network to be in on the joke in an unprecedented way.
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Ancient Aliens: Season 6 – Vol 1 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on October 8th, 2014

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“Millions of people around the world believe we have been visited in the past by extraterrestrial beings. What if it were true?

Ever since Eric von Daniken released his speculative book and its subsequent 1970 film Chariots of the Gods, there has been an entire field of study created around something commonly called Ancient Astronaut Theory. The idea is that extraterrestrials have visited many of our ancient civilizations. The theory continues that these visitors had a hand in shaping our development, whether it be through technology or even manipulation of our very DNA.
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Million Dollar Arm (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on October 7th, 2014

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Baseball is huge, and Bollywood is huge, so imagine if you put them together. In many ways, Million Dollar Arm is about Indian culture and what a separate world it is from ours. The film starts out in Los Angeles where J.B. Bernstein (Jon Hamm from Mad Men) is a sports agent who has broken off from a big agency to start his own firm. His partner, Aash (Aasif Mandvi of The Daily Show), is very nervous about where their next client is coming from, since they lost a big one right at the start of the film.
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“31 Nights Of Terror” From Dusk Till Dawn: Complete Season One (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on October 5th, 2014

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In 1996 it was a brave new world for Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino was still riding the wave of Pulp Fiction’s fame, while Rodriguez was going strong with his follow up to El Mariachi, Desperado (which went on to be a bigger hit). The two had crossed paths at various film festivals, and through the course of their meetings they discussed various projects they could possibly do together. The project that brought these two together would be horror/ crime genre mixer, From Dusk Till Dawn.
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The 100: Season 1 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 29th, 2014

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“Prisoners of the ARC, hear me now. You’ve been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us, indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would’ve sent others. Frankly, we’re sending you because your crimes have made you expendable.”

It’s 97 years ago and nuclear holocaust has made life on Earth unlivable… at least that’s what most people believed.
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Sleepy Hollow Season 1 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 26th, 2014

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“And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, “Come and see.” Then, behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

No, this is not a Johnny Cash song or a bible study post. Believe it or not, we’re talking Ichabod Crane from Washington Irving’s famous story The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Fans of the tale will recall that Ichabod came to encounter the headless horseman in one of the first American horror tales ever written.
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Once Upon A Time: Season 3 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 25th, 2014

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“There is a town in Maine where every storybook character you’ve ever known is trapped between two worlds, victims of a powerful curse. Only one knows the truth, and only one can break her spell.”

ABC has had a very important asset going for it for years. It’s one that the network has seldom taken any advantage of. That asset is its parent company. You see, ABC is part of the Walt Disney family. With the rich history of stories the studio has in its arsenal going back to the 1920’s, it was only a matter of time before some clever people decided to find a way to use that rich history into a television series.
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The Rover (Bluray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 23rd, 2014

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“You should never stop thinking about a life you’ve taken. That’s the price you pay for taking it.”

In 2010 David Michod directed his first full-length feature Animal Kingdom. It was a critical success, and he went on to pick up a Best Director award with the Australian Directors’ Guild. Now Michod has completed his sophomore effort, The Rover, which does explore some familiar ground with criminal families, but the film takes a more introspective approach to life and what matters most in the world when you believe you have nothing left to lose.
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Big Bang Theory: Season 7 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Brent Lorentson on September 18th, 2014

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In case you’ve been hiding beneath a rock the past few years, The Big Bang Theory isn’t just a hit TV show, but instead it’s a show that has ingrained itself into pop culture. You can go out to most major retailers and find shirts with “Bazinga”, and I’m willing to bet at least one of your Facebook friends has posted a GIF on their feed about the show. It’s a show I told myself I wouldn’t get caught up in because I was so sure it was nothing more than a fad.
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Arrow: Season 2 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 18th, 2014

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“The city still needs saving. But not by the Hood. And not by some vigilante who’s just crossing names off a list. It needs… something more.”

That someone, that something more …that something else is the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Not to be confused with the same-colored Hornet or Lantern. In season 2 Oliver Queen finally sheds the name and reputation of the Hood or Vigilante. He has vowed not to kill, and he no longer has the list to guide him. His job now is to go after any bad guys in Starling City.
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Supernatural: Season 9 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 12th, 2014

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“There’s virtually nothing the Winchesters can’t do if they work together.”

But that’s the rub, isn’t it? The tradition has been that each of the last several seasons end up beginning with the brothers separated for one reason or another. Often one of them is trying to escape Hell, purgatory or some fantasy mental land. There are at least two times a year they split up over an argument.
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The World Wars (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 11th, 2014

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“One must regard the 30 years of strife, turmoil and suffering in Europe as part of one story. One story of a 30 years war.” – Winston Churchill

He was exactly correct, and one of only a few people of the time who had the vision to understand that concept. Before the end of World War II the first world war was known as The Great War. The idea of two separate world wars came later.
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Vampire Diaries: Season 5 (Blu-ray)

Posted in Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 10th, 2014

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“It’s been a long summer.”

And my how things have changed in Mystic Falls. Elena is a vampire, and Katherine is now a human, and doing a pitiful job of that, to be sure. Bonnie is a ghost who only Jeremy can see, and they’re trying to keep it all a big secret from everyone so they all think Bonnie is out globe-hopping and having a great time. Stefan is at the bottom of a lake in a safe where everyone else thinks Silas is.
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